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Who colonized Korea?

East Asia — the powers that ruled Korea, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Korea?

Japan. Korea was made a protectorate in 1905 and annexed in 1910, and remained under Japanese colonial rule until the empire's defeat in August 1945.

Japanese colonialism in Korea is a reminder that empire was never solely European. Annexation was followed by a campaign to erase Korean language, names and historiography.

Reference

Who ruled Korea, and when

1392–1910
Joseon dynasty / Korean Empire
1910–1945
Japanese colonial rule

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Japan
Independence
15 August 1945
Cultural policy
Korean language teaching banned and Japanese names imposed in the late 1930s
Forced labour
Hundreds of thousands conscripted to Japanese mines and factories
'Comfort women'
Tens of thousands of women coerced into military sexual slavery

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1905

    Protectorate treaty imposed after the Russo-Japanese War.

  2. 1910

    Annexation.

  3. 1919

    March First Movement suppressed with thousands of deaths.

  4. 1930s–45

    Forced labour, name changes, and the military sexual slavery system.

  5. 1945

    Liberation, followed by division at the 38th parallel.

Context

What the record shows

The unresolved questions of forced labour compensation and military sexual slavery remain live diplomatic disputes.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Korea?
Japan, from the protectorate of 1905 and annexation in 1910 until 1945.
How long did Japan rule Korea?
35 years of formal annexation, or 40 counting from the 1905 protectorate.
When was Korea liberated?
15 August 1945, with the surrender of Japan; the peninsula was then divided at the 38th parallel.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Korea

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.